1/2/2011

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Two more stories from the New York Post (and if this pans out these reports collectively should be considered Pulitzer material).

First, we learn that absenteeism is unusually high among sanitation workers, right now:

Between 660 and 720 Sanitation workers called in sick for the cleanup of last week’s blizzard — more than double the usual rate, The Post has learned.

About 11 to 12 percent of the Sanitation Department’s 6,000-strong force didn’t show up for work on Monday or Tuesday, city officials confirmed, as 20 inches of snow brought the Apple to a near-standstill.

And meanwhile we get this report of sanitation workers getting drunk on the job:

A group of on-duty Sanitation supervisors is under investigation for allegedly buying booze and chilling in their cozy department car for hours Monday night after the blizzard stranded a bus and three snowplows blocks away.

The city Department of Investigation is probing the incident after witnesses said four snow blowers blew off their duties to get blitzed, buying two six-packs of beer from a Brooklyn bodega. The workers then walked five blocks to their car, which was in 20 inches of snow in the middle of 18th at McDonald avenues near the F train entrance, passing the stuck bus and idle plows on 18th Avenue between Third and Fourth streets.

The four remained in the idling sedan until morning — then told their bosses they could do nothing about the blizzard because they had run out of gas, one witness said.

“They just sat in their car all night with the heat running,” the witness said.

Maia Lazar, the 21-year-old daughter of dearly departed LA freelance journalist Cathy Seipp (The National Review, many others), is a very busy person this holiday season. In addition to helping plan an upcoming forum in Budapest on January 15th for her employer, the Center for International Media Ethics, she has announced a multi-pronged 2011 initiative to preserve the legacy of her mom.

“I am working on sorting through my mother’s writings and will be putting together a book next summer,” Lazar tells FishbowlLA via e-mail. “In the meantime, I am re-publishing her blog and working on a journalism mentoring database, which I hope will be launched around the same time as her book.”

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